Bedridden patients are often plagued by bed sores occurring on portions of their body which have been in prolonged contact with the bed surface. This condition can be alleviated or wholly prevented by periodically changing the relative position of the patient in the bed. In addition to alleviating the problem of bed sores, it is known that persons have a natural tendency to want to shift their position during periods of sleep and that they rest more comfortably when able to do so. Many patients because of the nature of their illnesses or injuries can not move in bed without assistance and this necessary motion must be provided either manually by members of the hospital staff or by mechanical means.
One means to periodically move bedridden patients would be to provide a mechanism which would rock the bed back and forth transversely causing motion of the patient on the bed. Mechanisms to provide this motion can be incorporated in the bed frame, as shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,311,542 and 3,748,666. Doing this, however, greatly increases the cost of hospital beds as well as making such beds undesirably heavy and difficult to move. Since this rocking feature is not necessary for all hospital patients, it would be desirable to provide portable apparatus which can be attached to existing bed frames to provide this rocking motion selectively when and where needed for a particular patient at a particular time.
One approach to providing such a portable apparatus is found in copending U.S. application Ser. No. 768,910 now U.S. Pat. No. 4,080,673 which is a continuation of earlier application Ser. No. 631,626, now abandoned, both of which were filed by Morris J. Weisler, one of the inventors herein. The apparatus disclosed in these applications is more expensive and complex than the present apparatus because it requires two hydraulic cylinders for optimum operation. In addition, the flexible cables used to support the bed frame in these applications may not always provide enough support for a relatively heavy bed frame.
The present apparatus, by contrast, supports the bed between two beams which, in turn, are pivotably supported on a base. Additional support is provided by the fact that the bed legs extend through the bifurcated ends of the support beams to provide lateral support. A single hydraulic cylinder can provide the requisite rocking motion with this structure.
The device disclosed can be used with existing bed frames to provide a rocking motion when and where needed for a particular patient. This eliminates the need to transport heavy, bulky and unwieldy beds over great distances in a health care facility. Since the apparatus can be readily switched from bed to bed, there is no need to maintain a relatively large number of expensive beds having a rocking feature, many of which would be out of use at any given time.